Cong downplays, BJP inflates black money figures: Author

Out to score political mileage, the BJP is inflating money stashed from India into Swiss banks and tax havens, while the Congress is downplaying the illicit outflows estimated by a global report, lead author has said.

"The range of illicit outflows from India is actually between USD 22.7 billion and USD 27.3 billion per year," Dev Kar, lead author of 'Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2002-2006' told PTI.

Kar said both the BJP and the Congress are "misquoting" and "misinterpreting" him to serve their political agenda. He said the Congress has been "downplaying" the figures given in the report, as if it was not a serious issue. The BJP, on the other hand, is giving a highly inflated figure.

While his report is based on a five-year data from 2002 to 2006, the BJP figure goes back to the entire period of post-independent India, by multiplying the figure into the number of years, he said.

"That is wrong because USD 4.7 billion only consists the CED (change in external debt) component. But when you look at the range, you should be combining both CED and Trade Mispricing, which comes to USD 22.7 billion," he said.